“WHENEVER you dress me dolls, mammy, Why do you dress them so, And make them gallant soldiers, When never a one I know; And not as gentle ladies With frills and frocks and curls, As people dress the dollies Of other little girls?” Ah—why did she not answer:— “Because your mammy’s heed Is always gallant soldiers, As well may be, indeed. One of them was your daddy, His name I must not tell; He’s not the dad who lives here, But one I love too well.” MOLLY GONE NO more summer for Molly and me; There is snow on the tree, And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost, And the water is hard Where they used to dip bills at the dawn ere her figure was lost To these coasts, now my prison close-barred. No more planting by Molly and me Where the beds used to be Of sweet-william; no training the clambering rose By the framework of fir Now bowering the pathway, whereon it swings gaily and blows As if calling commendment from her. No more jauntings by Molly and me To the town by the sea, Or along over Whitesheet to Wynyard’s green Gap, Catching Montacute Crest To the right against Sedgmoor, and Corton-Hill’s far-distant cap, And Pilsdon and Lewsdon to west. No more singing by Molly to me In the evenings when she Was in mood and in voice, and the candles were lit, And past the porch-quoin The rays would spring out on the laurels; and dumbledores hit On the pane, as if wishing to join. Where, then, is Molly, who’s no more with me? —As I stand on this lea, Thinking thus, there’s a many-flamed star in the air, That tosses a sign That her glance is regarding its face from her home, so that there Her eyes may have meetings with mine. A BACKWARD SPRING THE trees are afraid to put forth buds, And there is timidity in the grass; The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds, And whether next week will pass Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush Of barberry waiting to bloom. Yet the snowdrop’s face betrays no gloom, And the primrose pants in its heedless push, Though the myrtle asks if it’s worth the fight This year with frost and rime To venture one more time On delicate leaves and buttons of white From the selfsame bough as at last year’s prime, And never to ruminate on or remember What happened to it in mid-December. _April_ 1917. LOOKING ACROSS I IT is dark in the sky, And silence is where Our laughs rang high; And recall do I That One is out there. II The dawn is not nigh, And the trees are bare, And the waterways sigh That a year has drawn by, And Two are out there.